


The Mighty Fall

by frankzhang



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Jason Grace is Alive, M/M, Post-The Trials of Apollo, it's been a year or two since apollo became a god again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27999600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankzhang/pseuds/frankzhang
Summary: The final moments of battle are never kind to Nico di Angelo.
Relationships: Nico di Angelo/Will Solace, implied valgrace and theyna, side Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	The Mighty Fall

**Author's Note:**

> sorry lol

Nico is shoved to the ground and he lands hard on his chest, his face scratching the dead grass. Huffing roughly, he pushes himself up quickly, swiping his sword in an arch at the enemy that had just pushed him down. The clang of two swords is heard before Nico focuses on the Imperial Gold against Stygian Iron. Jason gives him a hard look, his face dripping with dirt and sweat and blood. Nico doesn’t imagine he looks any better.

He pushes away Jason’s sword. “What the fuck were you thinking?” scolds Nico. “I could have killed you.”

“Well, if I didn’t, then that would have killed _you.”_ Jason gestures to the jagged spear impaled deep into the ground. “I’ll take my chances.”

Just as Nico begins to respond, he notices a basilisk strike at the two of them. He takes his turn shoving Jason to the dirt and slashing at the monster and reducing it to dust. Moving the hair from his eyes, he sees Jason looking up at him unamused.

“You really didn’t need to push me,” he deadpans, thrusting a hand up from Nico to grab.

“I really did,” says Nico. Jason looks as if he was going to bicker back when they turned at the sound of Leo’s shout. They see him get dragged by a wounded leg by a manticore, scratching at the ground and about to be surrounded by enemy demigods.

Jason looks at them before looking at Leo. The basilisks are thinning but more are creeping towards them fast. “Sorry, I-”

“Go,” Nico insists. “I can handle this, go!”

Nico darkens the shadows around him as Jason launches himself into the air. He braces himself and lunges at the basilisks before they can overtake him. While he attacks, Nico tries to take in the rest of the battlefield, attempting to spot any one of his friends, attempting to find Will.

A shout comes from behind him and Nico turns to find another demigod that betrayed them. Nico nearly hesitates in blocking a poorly swung sword as he defends himself against the inexperienced fighter. This kid couldn’t have been more than three years younger than him. He would have thought that after the battle in Camp Jupiter, no more demigods would turn against each other. Yet as Nico ducks and twists to rip the sword away from the girl that attacked him, he finds himself in a field filled with countless bodies.

The girl is visibly shaking as she looks at Nico holding both of their swords. Nico temporarily looks away from her to dual wield the weapons to kill the monsters he heard creep, cutting the heads of basilisks and stabbing a nearby dracaena. Wanting to tell the girl to go find a centaur named Chiron and say Nico sent her, he turns back to find her gone.

As he scans the battlefield, he finds her at the end of the clearing, stopping at the edge of the forest to look back at him before disappearing into it. 

There is a moment where Nico stands on the field, no monsters or demigods immediately coming to attack him, and he can properly focus on people’s faces. A bright flash of lightning thunders over the loud clashing of fighting all around him, and Nico tenses before he realizes it’s only Jason. Jason picks Leo up and flies to one of the nearest Apollo kids working overtime on the battlefield, which happened to be Will bandaging a different injury. 

Behind him, Percy and Annabeth are turning back to back, waiting for the next strike together as they take down the surrounding dracanae, picking them off one by one. All around the field, there are streaks of silver as Hunters of Artemis help take down the demigods from the other side and kill any of the remaining monsters. He almost smiles when he sees Reyna kick a manticore directly into Thalia for her to impale it with her spear.

From where he stands, Nico is sure that their enemies are outnumbered. Despite the casualties both sides have faced, the battle seems to be nearing its end.

His quiet moment of spectating was cut short as his instincts kicked in. His arms moved to block an arrow that was aimed for his chest. Nico looks down at the broken arrow on the grass, then he examines the terrain. About fifty feet ahead, directly beneath the glare of the sun, stands a demigod holding a bow. They make eye contact before he looks away from Nico first, aiming at another oblivious demigod.

Nico starts making his way towards him, his anger building as he sees him release an arrow and smirk, knowing its point reaches its target. To fight without your enemy seeing you, to kill a demigod with no remorse, to feel good enough to smirk about it… Nico moves faster across the field.

Along the way, he helps by stabbing unsuspecting monsters and knocking out the enemies. Nico doesn’t register any of the people he passes as he focuses on the next arrow that nearly zips past him to an unsuspecting victim. He cuts the arrow out of the air and struggles to shadow travel the remaining distance between him and the coward that refused to fight.

He feels the tug of the shadows but none are large enough. Nico growls as the harsh sun beats straight down on him and the battlefield. When he watches as another arrow is nocked onto the bow, Nico breaks out into a sprint and tackles the boy that’s been shooting at his friends.

They violently land on the ground and Nico recovers at the same time as the other. Nico stands before him, two swords in each hand, while the other picks the last arrow in his quiver to aim it at him.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Nico warned.

The boy begins walking around him and Nico turns his body to keep him directly in front of him. “No one ever wants to hurt anyone. But the purpose of war is to cause change. You cannot stop this, Nico di Angelo.”

Nico wants to comment on how the outcome of the war seemed to be in their favor but thinks better of it. Instead, he asks, “How do you know my name?”

The other simply scoffs. “How humble of you. As if no one knows the names of the children of the latest prophecy. Especially you, _Nico._ ” The boy makes direct eye contact. “You say you don’t want to harm, and yet people know of what happened to Octavian, to Bryce Lawrence.”

Nico scowls. “Everyone knows about them now. I knew I had no choices back then. It took me a long fucking time to accept that.” He takes a look at the arrow pointed at him and decides to drop the stolen sword in his left hand and relax his fighting stance. “I know I don’t want to hurt you, and you have a choice this time.”

There is a second of hesitation in the other boy before his face hardens, and he aims his arrow with more intensity, pulling it even farther back. “I never had a choice.”

The boy alters his aim the slightest bit to the left, just out of reach from Nico’s right hand, and lets the arrow fly.

His eyes estimate the trajectory of the arrow and his feet are moving before he even processes that he dropped his sword. Nico is yelling and he tries to run across the field faster than a flying arrow. 

“Will! Move!”

The fighting still hasn’t ceased while Nico dodges monsters and jumps over bodies. His vision is blurred to everything around him but one person. Nico pushes everyone out of the way, not caring which side they were on.

“Move! Will, _please! Move!_ ”

Nico is running, but time is slowing down. He feels like he’s moving fast and pushing his limit, but it’s like he’s moving in slow motion as he follows the arrow moving straight to the one thing he’s living for. As he races through monsters and clashing weapons, he vaguely knows that he’s been sliced a few times by enemies who caught him running by, but he doesn’t stop.

There’s a stabbing in his chest that Nico senses, but he can’t tell if someone actually hurt him or if it’s from the panic that’s settling in.

He can’t breathe. The pounding in his head gets stronger with every step and his throat is closing up. Nico’s voice tore at his vocal cords as he kept saying, screaming at Will to move. His movement doesn’t feel fast enough and no one has caught on to the building terror inside him as the sounds of the battle nearly drown him out completely.

“ _Will!_ ” yells Nico.

He turns his head away from the medical bag he was sorting, searching for the source of his name and meeting Nico’s eyes immediately. There is enough time for Nico to watch the emotions that flash in Will’s wide eyes, but there isn’t enough time for Nico to reach him before the arrow does.

In front of him, a manticore is running straight at him and Nico makes a split-second decision, praying to the gods that it works the same way it did with Lycaon. Nico shifts his direction and sprints directly for the manticore. At the last moment, Nico slides beneath it and grips its fur before he could escape. The manticore roars and he sees its tail get ready to strike just as he melts into its cool shadow.

Nico concentrates and forces himself to come out of any shadow next to Will. He emerges and looks for Will, blinking at the sunlight and barely seeing that he’s come out of a fallen demigod’s shadow.

Five feet from him, Will stands. Nico only has seconds to say his name once before he’s rushing to catch Will from falling.

Nico catches him from the side and nearly hurts himself on the arrow that has stuck itself into Will’s chest.

“ _No!”_ Nico clutches Will’s body and gently lowers himself. “No, no, no. Will-”

His voice breaks as he hears a scream from somewhere around him. The battle doesn’t stop for him. It continues and Nico knows his friends are still fighting behind him, but he can’t see anything except Will.

“ _Will._ Will, please.” Nico looks down at the arrow shaft and the white shirt that had started to soak with blood. “It’s okay, we can fix this, someone can fix this. _Will._ ”

Slowly, Will lifts his hand and places it over his. “There’s nothing…” he trails off.

“No. No, there’s always something.” Nico moves to remove the arrow, but Will tightens his hand and weakly shakes his head. “Will, please. You can’t- Don’t do this. I have to try.”

“Look...at the arrow, N-Nico…”

So he does. And Nico only then realizes the slight green aura around it. The arrow had been enchanted and it’s already taken effect.

Will gives him a delicate look and attempts to take a deep breath only to cough out blood. “It’s poisoned, and if you pull it out… Blood loss will get me quicker,” he states. “I’m sorry, Nico.”

Nico blinks the tears away and forces his eyes to focus on Will. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

Will shakily presses his hand to Nico’s cheek and wipes at his tears. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“I need you. Please, Will.”

“I love you, Nico di Angelo,” he says, letting his hand drop from Nico’s face.

“Will?”

Nico stares into Will’s eyes and his heart drops. Nico can only call his name louder. 

“Will? Wake up! Will! No, _gods, please._ Not you. It wasn’t supposed to be you. Never you...”

Nico holds himself closer to Will and he feels himself breaking. As he trembles over Will’s body, rocking them back and forth, he hears someone near him scream. The screaming won’t stop and when he feels the pain in his throat, Nico realizes it was coming from him.

The screams turn into sobs as Nico prays to his father to bring him back. He mumbles into Will’s hair all the things Hades would want to hear in exchange for Will. When someone starts to remove Nico from hugging Will, he starts yelling again, not wanting to leave his side.

His hands are gripped into someone’s chest as Nico struggles to push them away. Nico starts to shout at the people that start to lift Will’s body away and he’s pulled into a crushing hold.

Jason’s voice is above his head, telling him that it would be okay, that he’s sorry, and if Nico was thinking straight, he could have taken Jason down and shadow traveled away. But all he can think of now is Will as he pushes against Jason’s arms that have kept him from hurting anyone that touched Will.

When he realizes he couldn’t escape, Nico sobs into his chest and the grip around him loosens into a comforting hug. He pounds his fists against Jason’s shoulder and cries.

Nico doesn’t even notice that the battle’s ended.


End file.
